SAN DIEGO—Brian Gibbs, CEO of a retirement advising and tax planning company, brought fifty of his clients to see Shen Yun Performing Arts at the San Diego Civic Theatre on April 22.
“I love it,” said Mr. Gibbs, who was seeing the performance for the third time. “I have brought fifty of my best clients with me to enjoy this because of its wonderful beauty, the music, the culture. It’s all just wonderful.”
Based in New York, Shen Yun was founded in 2006 and is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company. Now with eight equally sized companies touring the world simultaneously, Shen Yun’s mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture and to give its audiences a glimpse of pre-communist China.
Mr. Gibbs said that he most enjoyed learning about Chinese culture, which, according to the Shen Yun website, is believed by the Chinese people to be divinely inspired and is deeply rooted in the spiritual teachings of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism.
“The commonality they have with all culture and being from divine origin, the love and kindness toward each other and the belief that we will all be in a better place later; I think that cultural commonality with what I believe and with all of us as people, I think that’s what draws me to it is I wanted to my clients and others to see the beautiful nature of the Chinese people.”Mr. Gibbs shared that the spiritual element of Shen Yun’s performance was “the part that’s drawn [him] the most,” and that he felt a connection with the spirituality.
“I think it’s wonderful,” he said. “I felt great emotion in many of those things as they showed the Creator coming down with them and then delivering them from problems. I really felt a great connection with that.”Mr. Gibbs praised Shen Yun’s patented animated backdrop, which allows performers to move between the stage and the background.
“I don’t know how they are so perfect in their timing, but it makes it so much more enjoyable to have that dimension,” he said.
Mr. Gibbs also expressed his admiration for the dancers and said that their techniques were amazing.
“It’s amazing. Just amazing how much time they must spend in becoming so expert at what they do. It’s the best. I have never seen such great poise and balance and acrobatic ability before… They are beautiful, and their movements are beautiful, their faces are beautiful, and I think that they are just wonderful in all they’ve done.”The dancers also inspired the biggest takeaway Mr. Gibbs got from the performance. Which was that “if you devote yourself to something to be expert and extremely good at it, you can do amazing things with the human body and the mind. So, I think the takeaway is that if you really want to do something, you can, but it takes a lot of dedication and time and concentration.”
Reporting by Linda Jiang and Wandi Zhu.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
